Breakout
by dollfacen'pipe
Summary: Doctor Stockhill is dead. Emilie has the key, the doctors are gathering for tea, and the inmates are only a turn of a lock away from revenge. Oneshot. Inspired by the songs from FLAG.  oh, and cameos by the Crumpets! EA/Veva, hurray!


_**A/N: Firstly, I have never read "The Asylum." **This story is my own imagining of the breakout scene, as inspired by the EA's new songs from FLAG, and the snippets of TAFWVG that I have read._

_**Secondly**, I chose to keep EA's name w/ the "ie," because, while this is set in the Victorian version of The Asylum, I am using details from the stage shows now. And again, I haven't read the book, so I wouldn't know how to write "Emily-with-a-y"._

_And** thirdly**, I do apologize for my grammar. I know I switched between present & past tense, which I normally don't do...but I was feeling lazy, and some bits just sounded better one way or another._

The hallways are dim, lit occasionally by the new harsh, electric lights. Shocking pools of flat yellow against the flickering shadows that pool in the corners.

She can't see movement in the shadows, the skittering sounds that signal her long-time friends, the first and most loyal of her allies in this prison. They never wandered the halls, where they might be found by the doctors, caught in cruel steel traps, or worse. Much like the inmates whose cells they shared.

But she can feel their eyes, glittering and curious, behind her. As she walks, a tottering, but steady pace down the hall, she can sense that the first couple are following her out. The rats skitter around the dark mound lying against the bars, paying no mind to the bloody footprints they follow, their eyes on this strange human-girl-rat, who they have watched for so many months.

_Mistress is out._

Her pace takes on a steadier stride, and she grips tighter the key in her hand. Her freedom. Her _power._ For of course she knew from the moment the door opened, she knew her intention. The Doctor was nothing more than one tally-mark. A grim smile, a smile now unfit to hide behind a fan, curls her lips.

Her breath leaves wisps of frost as she breathes in the smell of cold antiseptic, a smell that doesn't quite deaden the scent of blood and fear. It smells like freedom.

She turns a corner, not toward the stairs, but down the hall that will lead her to the long lines of cells that hold her sisters. The darker odors intensify. The halls are still lit with gaslight here, faded spots of yellow in the smoky dimness. Though the silence is heavy, she hears the sounds of breathing, mostly the slow sighs of sleep. The screaming only starts at night.

There are a few odd mutters of girls as the coo to the rats.

She raises length of broken chain wrapped around her wrist, and, not slowing, brings it down against the bars of the first cell.

_CLANG._

The sound is like a pebble dropped on water, as the sound causes a ripple of silence, then muttering, then the confused hums of girls whispering, whispering. That won't do. She needs them angry, awake, she needs them _mad._

_CLANG._

A few outraged keens pierce the darkness, and the mumblings rise like a tide around them, becoming hysterical. Who disturbs them? The doctors never come down at this time. Now is the time for a shallow sleep, for nightmares, hushed under covers. Maybe even dreams for the new inmates, the ones who still can.

_CLANG._

As the screeches increase, she adds her own voice to the cry, but not in outrage. No, hers is a cry of victory, almost a song.. A hush falls, and she keeps singing, in a voice rusty from unuse, but surprisingly strong and deep.. Perhaps it sounds a bit like a song from her youth-picked up like a discarded treasure in the smoky tavern that lives half-remembered deep in her mind. Or maybe it's of her own invention. The inmates listen.

She approaches a cell a two-thirds of the way down the corridor. Huddled in the corner are two familiar figures. The taller one is curled into a ball, one of her shapely legs lying in tangle with the stick-like limbs of the younger. She threads her long brown hair through her fingers, carding it like wool, her eyes dancing about as if watching an aerial ballet visible only to her. The second, shorter one, her orange thatch of hair standing crazily about her face, sits sprawled, staring at the ceiling, a smile playing at her lips.

Maggots snaps her eyes up to the figure standing at her cell door, and the wench's smile widens into a maniacal grin. She nuzzles the other girl's neck, who comes out of her daze in a slow moment. She stares silently at Emilie, her hand moving down to grasp a weather-beaten rosary around her neck, as the younger stands up and skips over to the bars, her dancing eyes on Emilie again.

"Time to sail, Captain." The former bar maid smiles impossibly wider in delight, actually jumping up and down for joy.

Emilie inserts the key into the lock. It smoothly clicks. The door opens, and the inmate jumps onto it, swinging out with the door. Her arms still tangled in the bars, she rocks back and forth, and at the slight swivel of the hinges, lifts her head, and begins to laugh—a joyous and hair-raising sound. The other slowly rises, walks forward, and, with her eyes closed, delicate as a lady stepping down onto a gleaming dock, takes a slow step over the threshold.

Emilie watches as a beatific smile spreads over Contessa's face, and her eyes open to meet the hungry stare of the shorter, sharp-faced woman. Emilie stares into those eyes, eyes like tattered lace, still possessing the last remnants of social grace and the slightly mad fervor of the Blessed. She considers for a moment that in another life the two would never have shared such a raw gaze, and raises her hand to cup the woman's cheek, her thumb skating up the curve of her lips.

Then she turns, steps to the next cell, and waits a moment for the women within to notice her presence. The blonde, her hair tangled around dried flowers, sits cross-legged, her head nodding back and forth as if with music. But her eyes open to Emilie's gaze readily, and she smiles in the shadows, then ducks her head and murmurs into the ear of the woman whose head lies in her lap. The black-haired woman slowly props herself up, wiping the grog from her eyes. Emilie grins at her graceless awakening. The blonde unfolds herself from the bed and totters forward, coming to rest unconsciously in a perfect fourth. Her hands skitter along the length of the bars.

"You have a pretty voice" she says hoarsely. She coughs once, than much more violently, her body bending to a painful angle. When she slowly straightens, her knuckles are white around the bars, but her voice is soft and warm again. "Is that your song?"

Emilie gazes at the blood on the ballerina's lips, and then looks back up into her eyes. Sorrow and rage boil in her heart, and she says "I'll teach it to you," and unlocks the door. Aprella steps out into the hall, still slightly unsteady, and Maggots leaps forward squeeze the woman in an obscenely tight embrace, her comically shorter head grinning up at the wan-looking blonde. "Hello, 'Prella." She singsongs. Then she giggles, and spins the woman around in a child's dance, singing over and over "Hello-prella-hello-prella…"

Emilie turns her head around, back to the bars one of her hands still tightly grips. Her gaze trails up the graceful fingers ghosting over hers, up the arm and neck and to Veronica's face. She stares unashamedly up at the woman, her corset-shaped figure and sensual features striking even in the shapeless inmate gown. She meets the woman's gaze, the dark eyes that to men spoke of heat. Emilie saw blacker stories there, of heartbreak and false promises, of the cold of alley walls, of hands pressed roughly over a screaming mouth. She knows that men would never see the lies in this seductress's eyes, or the deadened quality afterward.

VeVa's hand trails up Emilie's arm as she steps out of the cell. With the burning sensation comes the realization that she has never been this close to Veronica without bars or doctors between them. Without hesitating, she pulls the woman's face down to her own, and kisses her hard. Emilie's own tiny frame presses into the woman's curvier one as VeVa leans heavily into the kiss. _God, _she thinks, as the woman pulls her even closer.

Emilie wills her fingers to un-knot from the woman's long, dark hair, and with a last suck on her bottom lip, pushes the taller woman away.

She grips her key tightly again, and continues on to the next cell. The inmates, who had silently watched the exchanges between the small, strange liberator and her cohorts, were often already at the bars of the cages. Some were still huddled in corners, clinging to the walls, but Emilie crouched down by them in the gloom, her hands untangling theirs from the bed-posts and bricks, pulling them into the dim, artificial light. Cage after cage after cage, until all the inmates stood in the shadows, quieter than they ever were for similar ministrations of their keepers.

As the last females stumbled out of their cells, Emilie heard the gong of the clock.

_CLANG. CLANG. CLANG._

_CLANG. _

She grabbed the chamber pot from the nearest cell, (empty, thank god), and kicked it onto it's head. Gripping the bars of the same cell, she pulled herself up, one foot planted on the upended stool, the other lodged in a crossbar. She stared out at the hollow eyes of her compatriots. A few hundred, perhaps, and there were still 3 other corridors to go.

_Back on stage,_ she thought with a twisted grin.

"Inmates."

"We are out. There are many of us." Her eyes raked over the crowd, shivering in the gaslight. "There are many of us, and there are 50 of _them._" A shiver of fear—of hate, of rage, of…excitement?—traveled through the crowd.

"We have suffered for days and months and years. We have been beaten, _fucked_"—her mouth twisted around the word, a harsh thing that she had only heard uttered once or twice in childhood, now not only a common epithet amongst the inmates, but a regular practice of their "protectors"—"and left for dead in our cells.

"But now we are out."

"They left us in the dark, left us to rot and die and go mad_._" Maggot's shrill laugh pierced the crowd, and here Emilie let her own insanity color her words. "We will find them. We will repay them.

"And we will kill them all."

In the flickering light, she lifted the silver key. It reflected in their eyes, hundreds of hollow eyes, now flickering with something like life for the first time inside these heavy, cold walls.

"Ladies—" Here some of the inmates began to laugh, a abrasive, terrifying sound like the clatter of a harpsichord, and as beautiful to Emilie as the purest notes on a violin.

"Inmates…

"It's time for tea."

_**A/N:** So I don't really know how good this is. I just wrote it this afternoon...I apologize for my excessive use of Crumpets, but I wanted to put in a bit of my own imagined characterization for each._

_And again, this was inspired by the new FLAG songs more than anything. So sorry for the sure-to-be-abounding book discrepancies._


End file.
